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Open the Doors

by Hilary Hawke and Claude & Ola

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Slumber 04:50
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Undoing 04:27 video

about

With beautiful textures, and polyphonic lines, the music on Open the Doors is an achingly beautiful dreamscape featuring rich, full piano chords, shifting layers of synthesizer drones and colors, and virtuosic banjo lines.

When Hilary reached out to Claude and Ola to start the music for Open the Doors, it was during the Covid-19 pandemic. It finally seemed that there was a break in the usual pace, to take stock of things around them, and make a plan to start something really special.

“When I first met Ola, we were 15 years old, and even at that time, we had this deep understanding of how we both felt and experienced music”, says Hilary. “We both were really passionate about expression in music, and later on we went to the same music school together. We melted over Chopin and Villa-Lobos, and anyone really baring their soul through music. In 2020, when I sent her a little of what I was writing, both Claude and Ola were on a Zoom call with me before I could even ask them if they liked it! They also were a vital part in the idea to center the album on imagery of the story I was writing, Open the Doors.”

The songs on the album were approached in different ways but all were started with the intention to provoke imagery and be the soundtrack for the short story, Open the Doors. In 2021 the group was awarded the NYC Artist Corps Grant which culminated in a multimedia piece using this music, silhouette puppetry and a draft of the story which deals with grief and the coming of age. Because of their three very different backgrounds there was a lot of ‘play’ and possibility with how each tune could be composed. Regardless of the methods used though, Hilary would initiate on banjo, record a demo, which was sent to Claude and Ola to compose their parts. For a composition process like this, a friendship and a trust must be in place to expose the inner layers of beauty and dissonance that exist within Open the Doors.

Take for example, ‘A Slumber did my Spirit Seal.’ The title comes from a moving poem by William Wordsworth dealing with the death of a loved one, but also using imagery of vines and mountain laurel for the setting of Open the Doors. Using improvisation and as few notes as possible Hilary recorded three initial tracks. From those, a favorite was chosen and a part was refined before sending to Claude and Ola. A similar process took place on their end, where Ola would compose her part, as freely as possible, then send to Claude to fill in the last elements, all while staying connected to the musical spirit of the narrative and leaving a lot of space. This kind of process took about 3 weeks, but sometimes life would get in the way, and one tune on the album could take 3 months.

This longer process took place on the tune, ‘Rain into Snow.’ Hilary wrote a fully formed solo piece for banjo, using a slow tremolo throughout and uncovering different melodic suspensions. To collaborate, Ola added a counter melody on the piano instead of playing along with banjo throughout. Claude adds his part last, keeping a creative nuance. The droning and the colorful, textural “bleeps” and “bloops” of the modular synthesizer bring out the dream-like quality.

For the tune ‘Undoing,’ Ola and Claude were actually given a chapter of the story to read while listening to the demo of music that Hilary sent. The music represents the transformation of a girl into a large, dark and disfigured tree. As each piece of her gets ripped apart, her fingers turn into branches, her heart into the roots, her chest into the trunk. With a folkloric quality, the story line doesn’t depart too far from old Scots-Irish ballads about people turning into instruments, like in the traditional tune, ‘The Wind and the Rain.’

The album was first conceived by Hilary in the winter of 2020 in Saranac Lake, NY where she made an “escape” from the city during the pandemic. Being snowed in every night didn’t bode well for her 1990 Volvo and she was stuck in Northern, NY for 5 days, so a lot of writing took place. Because of the additional isolation of Covid-19 all of the meetings about the album took place on zoom. Each piece was talked about and ideas shared openly. Words like “looming” and “twisting” were thrown around, and sometimes images were sent to each other of what the music was supposed to sound like. However, all of the music creation and recording was done individually, at home, by the person playing the music and sent to each-other one by one. After parts were recorded, Hilary took a pass at mixing the tune, and sent this to Ola & Claude who would weigh in on thoughts about tone and arrangement. The whole process was a collaboration, and the final mastering was done by Claude himself with Aldous Estate Mastering.

BIOS

Hilary Hawke is a New York City based musician who performs internationally and locally. Her 2022 season included performing at Lincoln Center, and in the Weill Recital hall of Carnegie Hall as well as many other performing arts venues. She had the honor of performing for 10 days at the World Expo in Dubai and also collaborated with musicians from around the world at New England Conservatory’s SilkRoad project. In 2018 and 2019 Hilary was the banjoist for the off-Broadway and Tony award-winning Broadway production of Rogers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! Hilary studied classical music on clarinet and played guitar and wrote many songs at the open mics in the legendary Caffe Lena in Saratoga, NY. She earned a degree in clarinet at the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam, and briefly studied music therapy with classical guitar at the University of Georgia. After moving to NYC, Hilary devoted herself to performing a variety of music on the 5-string banjo.

Ola Aldous has an active practice in both visual arts and as a musician. She emigrated from Ukraine as a child in 1991, where she had studied in the Kharkov Special School of Music for Gifted Children, a rigorous school for young musicians. Ola received her bachelor of music degree in piano performance from Crane School of Music and a Bachelors of Fine Arts concentration in painting and drawing at SUNY Potsdam. She is located in Northern, NY, along with her partner, Claude Aldous.

Claude Aldous taught himself bass guitar and music theory after three lessons from a friend’s older brother, and never stopped playing music for very long thereafter. College found Claude performing in numerous punk bands and attending as many underground performances as possible. His interest in industrial music led him to finesse his way into three years of electronic music composition classes at his alma mater’s music school. A college radio show, working at a record store, booking live music and running the soundboard, running a recording studio, and starting a record label were all natural activities he undertook that surprised no one. When he and Ola first connected he was active in five different music ensembles, traveling hours away to perform “locally”, and taking off to perform in NYC, Boston, and Montreal as often as possible.

For media requests, please contact Adhyâropa Records at adhyaroparecords@gmail.com.

credits

released February 3, 2023

Hilary Hawke (banjo)
Ola Aldous (piano)
Claude Aldous (synthesizers)
Recorded by Hilary Hawke and Claude & Ola
Mixed by Hilary Hawke
Mastered by Aldous Estate Mastering

La Valise video by Andrew Benincasa
Undoing video by Milenko Skoknic
Layout and design by Bex Zank
Album artwork by Ola Aldous

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Hilary Hawke and Claude & Ola New York, New York

With beautiful textures, and polyphonic lines, the music on Open the Doors is an achingly beautiful dreamscape. Featuring rich, full piano chords, shifting layers of synthesizer drones and colors, and virtuosic banjo lines.

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